From the earliest surviving kinescopes through the exuberant technical genius of his ABC specials, with a few not-on-home-video rarities mixed in, this selection of classic clips and complete episodes spans Kovacs’ pioneering television career.

It's Time for Ernie (NBC, March 7, 1951)

It's Time for Ernie (NBC, June 1951)

The local success of 3 to Get Ready, Kovacs’ pioneering morning show on WPTZ Pittsburgh, an NBC affiliate, convinced network executives in New York to give the unorthodox host a shot on national television. Every weekday for 15 minutes (a standard programing slot at the time) Kovacs let his imagination loose, running through unrehearsed gags and routines that frequently exposed and upended technical and production elements of the medium, including his classic physical explanation of how to properly tune a set.

The Ernie Kovacs Show (NBC, February 20, 1956)

After his late-night talk show on Dumont ended in 1955, Kovacs jumped back to NBC where he was initially dropped into a morning slot up against Arthur Godfrey Time on CBS. Still also hosting a radio show on ABC, Kovacs delegated production responsibilities and assembled an ensemble of performers, including regular collaborator Edie Adams and Barbara Loden (who later directed the independent feature Wanda, 1970). As Deke Hayward, a member of the Kovac’s hand-picked three-person writing staff, said of the show’s wildly inventive approach to comedy, “We did not know what television was incapable of doing.”

Ernie Kovacs Special #4 (ABC, September 21, 1961)

Ernie Kovacs Special #8 (ABC, January 23, 1962)

In 1961, Kovacs was hired by sponsor Consolidated Cigars to host a showcase of classic silent films called Silents Please in a deal that also gave Kovacs his own monthly, half-hour special variety show on ABC. Between April 1961 and January 1962 (with breaks), Kovacs wrote, produced, co-directed and appeared on screen in eight ABC specials, a series of career-topping comedy extravaganzas that packed more gags into 30 minutes—from technical wonders to pie-in-the-face simplicity—than previously thought humanly possible. As Kovacs biographer Diana Rico wrote of the specials, they were “beautifully polished anthologies that melded everything he had learned and thought about in twelve years of working in television. With regard to these specials, Ernie was a true auteur.”